By Jeanine Budd

Only 25 percent of Boston Public School children are currently receiving health education from paid, public school teachers.

A coalition of students from Northeastern, Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts at Boston are stepping in to help fill the void.

The organization that’s responsible for bringing these volunteers together and into the schools is called the Peer Health Exchange (PHE).

These students volunteer roughly 10 hours every week learning the material and teaching it to ninth graders at more than 10 different Boston public high schools. The students at Northeastern are paired with the Parkway Academy of Technology and Health, Boston Community Leadership Academy and Urban Science Academy.

Taryn Silver, a senior health sciences major and a leadership council member for PHE, recalled a compelling story from a Harvard volunteer, who taught an STIs and HIV workshop to high school freshmen.

“He said that this kid in the back of the room had is head down the whole time and didn’t appear to be listening, but at the end of the class, the student came up to him and said, ‘Thank you so much. Now I don’t have to die of AIDS like my father, ‘” Silver said.

According to PHE’s website, PHE started in New Haven, Conn., when a group of six Yale undergraduates were teaching health workshops in the public school system, “in order to fill the gap left by an underfunded, understaffed district health program.” The students went on to found PHE in 2003. It was first implemented in the New York City public school system. It’s been there for four years, and is now in its second year in Boston. Next year, PHE hopes to expand its program to the west coast.

The organization came to Northeastern during this past spring.

“They interviewed people and chose myself as the co-coordinator, Taryn Silver as a leadership council member and Kristen Bunnell as another leadership council member,” said Julianne Lemelin, a co-coordinator for Northeastern and a senior health science major. “With the support of the PHE staff, Taryn, Kristen and myself recruited and interviewed the other members. I did the work to get all the logistics in place. For example, finding a student group sponsor so that we could advertise and make room reservations to have a place to hold meetings.”

Although it was a lot of work to do, all three knew the work would be worth it.

“If it weren’t for PHE, the students would not be receiving comprehensive health education due to funding cuts,” Lemelin said. “That is a really, really scary idea to me because without basic health knowledge and decision making skills, how are they possibly going to make healthy decisions? If you don’t have your health, it’s really challenging to lead a productive life.”

As a co-coordinator, Lemelin holds the most time-intensive of the three different volunteer commitments of PHE. The three different positions are co-coordinator, recruits, trains and manages volunteers; leadership council member, who master one workshop and manages health educators; and the health educators. Every position involves teaching a variety of health issues to high school students.

Lemelin said the spring workshop topics include sexual decision making and communication, contraception, STIs ‘ HIV, abusive relationships, rape and sexual assault, nutrition and physical activity and tobacco, drugs and alcohol.

“This is the type of work I’m interested in pursuing after I graduate,” Lemelin said.

“To be able to get experience training and managing volunteers before I even graduate sounded like a really great opportunity.”

At Northeastern, about 40-45 students participate in the program, but the group is hoping to increase that number next semester, Silver said.

“It’s a good experience for anyone who wants to do anything with health or teaching or just wants to have a good volunteer opportunity,” Silver said. “They even provide volunteers with a recommendation for grad school and anything like that.”

Currently, the group is funded by the Health Science Society, but they want to become an official student group at Northeastern.

For more information on how to get involved with Peer Health Exchange, students are encouraged to visit peerhealthexchange.org, or send an e-mail to [email protected].